


How The Salem Witch Trials Almost Ruined Everything

by graywrites



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Childhood Friends, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Who am I, i wrote this in once straight and manic sitting, its 1 am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 11:58:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12887400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graywrites/pseuds/graywrites
Summary: Chloe has always been especially good at counting her losses, and she knows all about magic and breaking things, intimacy and anger, and every other high place in Arcadia Bay from the time Max left to now.





	How The Salem Witch Trials Almost Ruined Everything

**Author's Note:**

> so this is just. a ramble about chloe's perception of max & the world around her from childhood until the events of lis maybe? its sorta canon divergent??? ig? i just. sat down and wrote this so im sorry if its bad/grammatically incorrect but it couldnt all be for naught

 

            The most important thing about Max was maybe that she was always, _always_ there, even when she wasn’t, her absence punctuating every heartbeat, cracked breath, broken vase and funeral, and every time you saw something beautiful you thought of _her, her, her_ , until you figured that she must be the most innocent looking witch on the whole damn west coast, wondered what other witches she’d meet in big bright Seattle, wondered if she’d laugh and tell stories, talk about, think about, dream about _you, you, you._

There are weirder ways to learn about death just in time, crying like a child and feeling stupid on the side of the road over a cat, but Max was there, arms tangled together and tears forming ponds, lakes, oceans, until you couldn’t tell who was who anymore, and it must have been an hour home alone before you could gather the gall to call your parents and quit balling like you were three and not thirteen, and then Max collected up all of your broken pieces, held them together by just your right hand, and you spent the golden hour digging up a grave in your mother’s marigolds because Max knew how to make the sad shit beautiful.

           

            There are worse ways to learn about loss, you remind yourself, tell yourself as you pivot off of rails on traintracks, chant to yourself like it’s a mantra even though you’d never do yoga, repeat yourself as a method of survival, worse ways than shattering glass that you never saw and wandering in the dark, phone calls, emergency rooms, antiseptic bleeding from your pores for days after, eyes and ears bloody or clear in the mirror, gone if you touch it, gone if you wake up. Worse ways, worse ways, Max held you once again, you felt guilty and she was sympathetic but rigid, out of her emotional league and for a moment you resented her for the doe-eyed look ‘till you remembered that she was only thirteen, just a kid, _just a kid_ , and then you went up to your room once she left and tried to count how many tragedies you’d held her together for off the top of your head, wondered if she was starting to hate you or love you, felt ridiculous, went to bed.

 

            When you were a kid everything was the static scent of vacuums or liquid sunlight, depending on countless variables. Everything was so beautiful, Max wouldn’t let you forget, and you could swear you could see her heart swell; she’d cry over nothing, she’d cry over everything, she was hardly ever sad. Even when there was nothing to cry about, her eyes were bright blue and watery, she’d trace her fingers over your wooden railings a dozen times but she’d never need anything, or you never knew how to offer.

 

            You only cried when it was important or when you felt so angry that it filled up your lungs; once, when you were twelve, you’d gotten _so_ mad about something so dumb, and you’d yelled at Max in the late afternoon summer boil until you couldn’t breathe and your vision swam. Tears were streaming down your face and you were sputtering, but Max just stood there, like she wasn’t even there. She didn’t cry at all. Her eyes were just those same ancient headlight fears, and it made you so mad, but she didn’t speak or leave or try to interrupt until finally, your mom came out and led her out of the garden, out of the house, out of the block, kept leading her forever and ever.

 

            You know where Max is in the forefront of your brain, but somewhere, some part of you, twelve and wild-eyed, is still trying to figure out where they went.

 

            You both apologized at dawn the next day.

 

            Max believed in you better than anyone else did, and, honest to God, she thought you could fly.

 

            You were only seven and just stupid and tall, for your age, and all you could hear was screams and jeers as you hung off of the metal with peeling red paint catching under your thumbnail, and Max was earnest. And, really, she believed that as soon as you leapt from the matte tar, you’d stay in the air, and maybe go up, up, up, forever, maybe without her, maybe to Neverland or somewhere you’d forget her, but she didn’t mind; she just wanted you to fly, even if she couldn’t.

           

            You broke your arm in three places, but years afterwards, only in private, Max and everyone else on the Arcadia Bay Elementary School playground that May morning would swear that you flew for two seconds straight before you fell.

 

When you had to be rushed to the emergency room in an ambulance, Max was so scared you thought she was going to die. You spent your whole stay at the hospital asking each other ‘are you okay?’ After that, Max became more of a voice of reason, and you had to start believing in yourself enough for both of you, even though you knew it was dumb to fly.

 

            You thought about that a lot when you were sixteen and leaning against the rail of the top lighthouse: you thought about Max Caulfield and the day you flew, and so by the time it was dark out you’d always be on the ground, and you’d always take the stairs.

 

            The day Max left, you thought your life was over. You broke everything in your room and swept it into your closet with every other skeleton you recognized and the ones you didn’t while your mom was at work and then screamed into the wooden walls until you were hoarse. It was the end of the world. Again.

 

            When you were little, you thought that so long as Max was by your side, you could handle anything. The day she left for Seattle she came by with a car all packed up and the silence between you and her was worth a hundred and eighty-seven miles. She was rigid and only thirteen, but you couldn’t stop yourself from being angry.

 

            More than angry. More than any word you could think of, everything was so unfair, it would never get better, you worked yourself up into sickness in an empty house with no dad, no Max, no Bongo, so full of ghosts that you should have never felt alone again.

 

            When you were sixteen you met Rachel Amber, a whole new kind of witch who did it better than Max ever did, and you couldn’t tell if that might be worse.

 

            Rachel Amber was waves and gin, she lit you on fire and it spread until it was irreversible. She held you and kissed you and breathed you in until you felt like yourself, until you could figure out what that meant, and when you looked her in the eyes everything blended together.

 

            She was steady when you needed it, wild and thrashing with tears in her eyes when she couldn’t help herself, brimming with emotion, light and sound threatening to spill over into a world that didn’t deserve it. God, she was beautiful.

 

            You never stopped moving, the two of you, yin and yang, hands in perfect tempo, one way mirrors all of the time until all of your clothes smelled like campfires or expensive perfume and organic toothpaste, until you’d find her hairs in your bed, her eyes in the water, her hands in the clouds, like anything _meant_ anything or something.

 

            Max, though almost two hundred miles away, was there, always there. Within a month of knowing you, Rachel could talk about Max like an old friend from years past with a future unknown. She could describe your childhood in top to bottoms, fill in all of Max’s dialogue, tell you how your heart ached for her and why, but never tell you why you’d been hearing nothing but radio silence since Max left for a bigger and better that might have swallowed her doe eyes whole in one sitting.

 

            Rachel always thought you could fly, too, but she only asked that she could come with you. When you let her know that you weren’t a kid anymore, and neither was she, she just laughed until the sun came up, even though you didn’t say anything funny.

 

            Life kept teaching you lessons about loss, even when you knew enough, knew maybe more than anyone in Arcadia Bay, and every inch of you was exhausted from each new hurt, battle, cigarette or disaster, and you could hardly breathe anymore by the time you were on the cusp of adulthood and Rachel Amber was gone.

 

            If you were a kid again, you’d try and be poetic, try and think that Rachel was like a star that couldn’t shine forever, but eighteen was old enough to know that was wrong. You were just _angry_. Everything was so unjust, nothing would ever feel the same again. Everything was so fucked, so fucked, so fucked, and there was no one left to cry on so you didn’t, you just sat in silence until you were numb like water, numb like hypothermia, until you could convince yourself that she just left without you when you knew that wasn’t true, knew you wouldn’t do the same, knew that there was no one in the world or otherwise who gave a shit about what came your way, knew nothing was worth it.

 

            You spent the better half of a year trying not to care, letting each pain kill your individual nerve endings in fighting spasms until you could maybe start new, or otherwise letting it all eat you alive- you could never tell. But you’d always been crafty and you knew where to turn pain into gain with pretty boy rich kid asshole who could only do wrong before a fire alarm sent you out, out, out, to the parking lot, hours and hours later.

 

            Seeing Max again was like coming home. You didn’t have it in you to be so angry anymore, didn’t want to let her suffer in silence and your cold anger, didn’t want to keep fighting, all you’d been doing all of your life was _fighting_ , and you figured that you must be a thousand years old, and that was old enough and wise enough to let her apologize with her dignity and guilt wrapped up in her doe eyes, old enough to hold her until you forgot she’d ever left, old enough to remember that it was Max, always Max, and that maybe it could be Max again.

 

            When you and everything else finally let her go, she looked like she was going to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE review i have so many tests and am failing and need smthn to live for.... if u want to request a fic or talk to me etc u can find me at kryptomb.tumblr.com/ask


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